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2015-05-09 Home Front: Culture Wars

All 19 women have washed out of RANGER training.

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Posted by Besoeker 2015-05-09 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11130 views ] Top

#1 “They’re a strong group of soldiers, who are working their way through the U.S. Army’s most physically and mentally demanding course.”

Uhh.. sorry General. There's another course that's a tad longer and tougher. So tough that sometimes no one finishes. FYI - they do it twice year at Bragg.

Posted by Bangkok Billy 2015-05-09 04:25|| 2015-05-09 04:25|| Front Page Top

Posted by 2015-05-09 04:43|| 2015-05-09 04:43|| Front Page Top

Posted by 2015-05-09 08:15|| 2015-05-09 08:15|| Front Page Top

#4 Once you get away from the base and off the roads from the vehicles, the physical requirements ramp up rather quickly. It's a continuous compounding of wear on the body that does require something neither bureaucrats, judges, or critics can supplement...other than just pushing the button and going all nuke right up front. Now that would involve a lot of fallout.

Posted by Procopius2k 2015-05-09 08:53|| 2015-05-09 08:53|| Front Page Top

#5 Once the body breaks down and they enter mountain phase it become a physiology issue, not a desire issue. HT to them for making the effort and going as far as they did.

Posted by 49 Pan 2015-05-09 11:10|| 2015-05-09 11:10|| Front Page Top

#6 Yep,

My Ranger class lost almost 40%.

It was an irregular class, combat vets and reserve officers trying to get a regular commission, SEALS, Marines, and AF Pathfinder types. I learned a lot from the war stories by the camp fires during the mountain phase.

Ranger School is a tough nut and it is more psychological after the Harmony Church phase. You have to will yourself to the finish line.

When we had our graduation ceremony, they cancelled the pass in review, too many of us limping from injuries.

Posted by Bill Clinton 2015-05-09 11:51|| 2015-05-09 11:51|| Front Page Top

#7 Once they let tab hunters into the course it was bound to get to this point. Its really too bad. I'm glad to hear the cadre are holding the line on standards for every candidate.

Posted by 49 Pan 2015-05-09 13:59|| 2015-05-09 13:59|| Front Page Top

#8 You mean the old cadre, 49 Pan?

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2015-05-09 14:01|| 2015-05-09 14:01|| Front Page Top

#9 I concur on the comments about cumulative wear and tear being the biggest challenge - along with simply functioning at the point of total exhaustion and near starvation (you are given high-calorie food - maybe 1.5 meals per day - but when you are moving 20 hours per day under heavy loads, you would need 3 meals per day to break even).

Getting past Benning Phase (which is mostly about verifying your individual fitness to proceed, and teaching you the Ranger Handbook checklists and standard procedures) may be the immediate 9and appropriate) goal for the female students - but that phase is just the preliminary shake-out. The real ball-busting occurs in the later phases:

You are in a 20-man patrol, moving eight km (five miles)) to an objective. It is 2:00 am, pitch dark, and you are moving sideways along the side of the Appalachian mountains in Northern Georgia. It is pouring down rain. Everyone is carrying a minimum of 25 kg (55 lb) of gear - six students are carrying an extra 6 kg (13 lb) - a radio or machine gun. You are just a patrol member. The Ranger Instructor (RI) up front tosses out a "flash-bang" - and everyone drops to the ground. The RI tells the Patrol Leader that he just tripped a booby trap that blew one of his legs off, and killed two of the patrol members behind him. Then, the RI yells out "Ranger 112, report to the RI" - and 112 is you roster number. You and your Ranger Buddy stumble forward - to be told "Ranger 112, you are now the patrol leader. Assess damage, make necessary adjustments to the patrol order, and complete the mission - leaving personnel and no equipment behind."

It is 2:00 am, pitch dark, pouring rain, and you are moving sideways on a 30 degree mountain slope. You must have originally recorded the location of the objective, the artillery fire control registration points, the radio frequencies and call-signs, and encryption book key pages - and you better know exactly where you are on map.

Now - in the darkness - you have to organize the cutting of saplings to create three stretchers to carry out the dead and wounded. That's three casualties, and six stretcher bearers - nine out of 20 patrol members. You have to redistribute the weapons and equipment of those nine, among the other eleven. Now everyone is carrying (or bearing) 40m kg (90 lbs).

Did I mention this is all happening at 2:00 am, in pitch darkness, in a blinding rainstorm?

God help you if anyone leaves behind a weapon, or a radio, or a set of night vision goggles. And God help you if you have no idea where you are on the map (which you feverishly try to figure out, huddled on the ground, on all fours draped under a poncho, using a red-filtered flashlight, trying to sort out a grease-penciled map, that you created 12 hours ago, when the original operations order was dictated.

This same pattern goes on, day after day, night after night - as your calorie-deprived body starts digesting your muscles, putting you into Ketosis - with your brain only half-functioning. By the final 12-day patrol, there is no scheduled sleep - you are moving 19 or 20 hours per day - sleeping in 10-minute increments (alternating with you Ranger Buddy) any time the patrol stops for a few minutes. And - sure enough - many times, both buddies fall asleep - at night, in some marshy scrub-land - and when the patrol moves out, the sleeping duo continue to slumber - and no one notices for ten minutes - until the signal is given to "send up the count" from the rearmost guy (the assistant Patrol Leader) - and the count comes up two short. The patrol stops - and a buddy team is sent back to try to find the missing students.

Near the end, the entire class is basically walking zombies. It take ENORMOUS effort to motivate you mates to rise up and do what is necessary to help you "pass" a patrol for which you are being evaluated.

So - getting past Benning Phase is not the "ticket to paradise" for the women students. It is simply the price of admission to the festivities to come - and cumulative wear and tear (along with scorpion bites, pigmy rattlesnakes, cellulitis from cuts and abrasions, twisted ankles, heat stroke, immersion foot, poison ivy, bee stings - whatever) to try to eliminate you.

I give all the ladies credit for trying - and if any make it - to the real standards - they have my utmost respect. But - we are talking about incessant wear and tear - over many weeks - that you must take in stride, while concentrating on mental details of a complex military mission - never knowing when you might have to take full control - and kick ass when and where necessary - to get walking zombies to perform.

THAT kind of Ranger
Lone Ranger
RLTW
Graduate, Class 11-76

Posted by Lone Ranger 2015-05-09 14:02|| 2015-05-09 14:02|| Front Page Top

#10 The 8 have gotten recycled... so they go to the Gulag and get another chance in the next class. I know guys who got recycled in every phase and still got tabbed.

Generally, City Week (if that's what they still call it), was designed to weed out the weak sisters, the tab hunters as 49Pan called them. Camp Darby is designed to weed out the tactically unproficient and the personality deficient. As the others pointed out, after Camp Darby, it's really mind over matter: sleep deprivation, food deprivation, head games, exposure.

I cannot describe the feeling of elation I felt, 120 guys crammed into a room at Camp Rudder that should hold 40, when the student First Sergeant did not call my name to pack up and head for the gulag and knowing I was headed for graduation.

BTW, it does not surprise me at all that the remaining females got recycled after Darby. They just don't have the tactical knowledge that the men have after Infantry BOLC or a year-plus in the Ranger BNs. None the Marines and foreign students in my class made it past Darby for what I observed to be the same reason.

Posted by 11A5S 2015-05-09 15:02|| 2015-05-09 15:02|| Front Page Top

#11 Georgia is where Ranger dreams die.

Posted by OldSpook 2015-05-09 17:18|| 2015-05-09 17:18|| Front Page Top

#12 But according my Tumblr activict friends, biology is just a social construct!

So confused now.

Posted by charger 2015-05-09 17:37|| 2015-05-09 17:37|| Front Page Top

#13 Lone Ranger,

Yep that was my experience also but it was SNOWING at Dahlonega for me not raining.

you forgot to mention the live chicken, two potatoes, carrots and onions they gave us one day in the Mountain Phase.

Speaking of the ladies, I occasionally watch professional tennis, usually Wimbledon and the US Open. I think there are a couple of those 6-foot plus lady tennis players that are sturdy enough to cut it in Ranger School. I think the 5-4 x 130 lbs. women are not going to cut it.

Ranger school taught me a lot about myself and about human nature.

What it taught me saved my life more than once.

Posted by Bill Clinton 2015-05-09 18:14|| 2015-05-09 18:14|| Front Page Top

#14 I never went to Ranger school. I did pick them up in my aircraft and throw fried chicken and candy bars to them in the back during their mountain phase... Later in life I flew the regiment guys in our little birds, or should I say on them as they rode on the outside. Tough sons of bitches, I hold them in high regard. These nine girls must be pretty tough, if they are recycling them it looks like they might have a chance. They are in a gut check of a lifetime and I wish them the best! I saw pictures of them, shaved heads and all. If they will let aviators and admin clerks run the course, women should be allowed to hunt the tab as well.

Posted by 49 Pan 2015-05-09 18:48|| 2015-05-09 18:48|| Front Page Top

23:06 chris
22:11 Procopius2k
20:49 Frank G
20:31 Frank G
20:21 Alaska Paul
19:44 swksvolFF
18:48 49 Pan
18:22 Bill Clinton
18:19 Bill Clinton
18:14 Bill Clinton
17:37 charger
17:32 Eohippus Thigum6400
17:21 Hellfish
17:18 OldSpook
17:08 Canuckistan sniper
17:08 Shipman
17:05 Shipman
15:30 Alaska Paul
15:02 11A5S
14:43 Silentbrick
14:39 Silentbrick
14:37 Elmerert Hupens2660
14:19 Shipman
14:08 Frank G